The End of Sparta: A Novel by Victor Davis Hanson Read Free Book Online Page A

and agreed to a safe slot in the back of the phalanx for the price of haranguing the officers before battle and upping the hoplite pay to a full silver drachma. But if he could not talk the army out of battle, then he had some lamb’s blood in his pouch that he would smear on his helmet as he peeled out at the back of the column before the first collisions with the Spartans. His real name was Menekleidas. He was from Aulis, on the narrow strait between Boiotia and Euboia, and thought he could steal the crowd back from the Arkadian. “Tell us something we do not already know, foreigner. My lads from the Euripos can stay put and hide well enough from the Spartans over on the big island of Euboia. Tell us why we need to fight and how we can win. Does this foul bird of Stymphalos think he can wing in here and squawk to us, scratching up a fantasy victory from his fancy drawings in the dirt?”
    Laughs and growls arose from behind. “You tell them, Backwash.” Menekleidas turned around to bask in them. Mêlon had had enough. He pushed away two or three rustics to grab Backwash by the neck, then bent him down and kicked his rear so hard with his good right leg that the would-be orator flew out like an arrow into the goat carcasses outside the tent—and to greater laughs than he had just earned with his smart talk. Backwash was lucky Mêlon had struck first; Chiôn had been about to use iron, not a fist or kick. The council was again almost reduced to a brawl. The Stymphalian hadn’t even begun his attack plans. Across the ravine the Spartans were ready to follow Lichas. Here the Boiotians were fighting each other.
    Mêlon raised his voice, “Shut up, all of you. Especially this slimy eel from the Euripos. I know my Homer and this here man is an ugly Thersites. Remember the poet’s words: ‘I swear there is no worse man than you are.’ Yes, this Thersites, this Backwash, knows well enough to charge us jacked-up tolls for those who pass over to Euboia. Like the double current, his men know how to collect coming and going. But so far he won’t fight for his fellow Boiotians.” Then Mêlon, son of Malgis, gave his own brief speech in the way he did to his pruners on Helikon. “I’ve heard all this before. It leads nowhere—except to a few fistfights and a Spartan army over there at Leuktra already chopping down our olives. They’re trampling our vines while we bicker and moan. You decide, all of you, whether you wish to be the dragon-sown men of Old Thebes, the bronze giants of our grandfathers’ age—or the connivers and trimmers of this new low era of Backwash.” Mêlon then put his arm around Ainias and raised his voice even louder. “Let this stranger from Stymphalos speak and finish his work in the sand—unless you know the Spartan better than he. But I recognize none of you from the battle at Haliartos. Is there any more than a handful here from the fights at Koroneia? See whether the Stymphalian bird has talons or not. I have fought him and his kind from Pellene before at the river Nemea. I would not wish to again. If you know spear work like he does, go on; if not keep still.”
    The crowd grew quiet along with Backwash. Murmurs went around that this fellow was the son of Malgis of myth. Here was Mêlon of prophecy of the falling apple—and here no less with his brand-faced slave.
    Ainias resumed drawing in the sand. “As I said, this they will not do. No, no—tomorrow the best of our army on the right will not kill their worst on their left. Our lesser folk won’t be harvested by the king across the field on his right. Instead Epaminondas and Pelopidas with his Sacred Band will take the harder path. They will veer toward the royal Spartan spears. They and the veterans of Thebes muster on our left , facing Kleombrotos and his royal right. Chiôn and I, with Mêlon here, go helmet to helmet with Lichas from Pythagoras’s noble left.”
    A louder rustling began at mention of the strange trick. Ainias once